Series Preview: Chicago Cubs (28-11) at San Francisco Giants (24-18)

In Series Previews by berselius43 Comments

The Cubs dropped two of three to the Brewers, and now travel to the west coast to face an actual good team. Now that I’m west coast adjacent I wish this was a weekday series, it’s nice when the games start after I get home for once (dying laughing). The Giants are coming off of a three game sweep of the Cubs other recent thorn, the Padres.

Team Leaders

Cubs

  • OBP: Ben Zobrist (.447)
  • ISO: Anthony Rizzo (.317)
  • HR: Rizzo (11)
  • R+RBI: Rizzo (63)
  • wRC+: Dexter Fowler (161)
  • BSR: Fowler (2.1)
  • SP K/9: Jake Arrieta (8.84)
  • SP BB/9: Kyle Hendricks (1.98)
  • SP FIP: Arrieta (2.61)
  • RP K/9: Hector Rondon (15.07)
  • RP BB/9: Rondon (1.26)
  • RP FIP: Rondon (1.07)
  • WAR: Fowler (2.5)

Fowler has been dethroned as the Cubs OBP leader! I thought this wouldn’t happen until at least June, if at all.

Giants

  • OBP: Brandon Belt (.429)
  • ISO: Hunter Pence (.199)
  • HR: Pence (7)
  • R+RBI: Pence (55)
  • wRC+: Belt (154)
  • BSR: Panik (1.3)
  • SP K/9: Madison Bumgarner (10.89)
  • SP BB/9: Johnny Cueto (1.62)
  • SP FIP: Cueto (2.23)
  • RP K/9: Santiago Casilla (10.91)
  • RP BB/9: Cory Gearrin (1.53)
  • RP FIP: Derek Law (1.84)
  • WAR: Cueto (2.2)

The top three of the Giants staff have posted incredible numbers, the back half of the rotation, not so much. Luckily that’s who the Cubs will get in the first two games of the series.

Pitching matchups

K/9, BB/9, ERA, FIP, projected ERA listed for each player

Friday: Jay Carrieta, RHP (8.84, 2.89, 1.29, 2.61, 2.59) vs Jave Peavy, RHP (8.10, 3.38, 7.43, 4.76, 3.91), 9:15 CT

Peavy has a huge BABIP this year (.372) which, along with sequencing, probably explains that lofty ERA. It’s not like he’s giving up a ton of line drives or anything, it just looks like a lot of balls are finding holes. He’s a fly ball pitcher so the Cubs offense could have a good day. Or it could be a long day for the Gianrs outfielders.

Saturday: Jon Lester, LHP (8.72, 2.05, 1.88, 3.13, 3.08) vs Matt Cain, RHP (6.46, 2.15, 5.87, 4.48, 4.36), 6:15 PM CT

It’s strange to think that Cain went from ace to struggling late rotation guy but here we are. It happened much longer ago than I thought – his last mostly full season was in 2013, and in the two years plus hence he has been a hot mess. He started off this season badly byt has righted the ship of late, going 7 or more innings in his last two starts. He has a relatively high BABIP this year, but unlike Peavy it’s more easily explained away by a big line drive rate.

Sunday: Kyle Hendricks, RHP (8.12, 1.98, 3.51, 2.72, 3.55) vs Madison Bumgarner, LHP (10.89, 2.76, 2.45, 3.02, 2.80), 7:05 PM CT

The biggest mystery of this game is which inning Bumgarner will homer off of Hendricks.

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Comments

  1. dmick89

    I knew it wouldn’t last, but I really liked looking at the Cubs 3rd Order Winning Percentage and seeing it above .800. Not today. .798.

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  2. myles

    JonKneeV: It’s amazing he can get out of bed, let alone pitch, without Drake LaRoche in the clubhouse.

    Kenny Williams for exec of the year. Finally excised Drake LaRoche, clubhouse cancer, and the team is suddenly good.

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  3. Millertime

    Oh, are we doing 90’s comedy now?

    What is the deal with homework? You’re not working on your home!

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  4. EnricoPallazzo

    dmick89,

    I mean yeah but I guess my question was, is wrigley typically a pitchers park in april/may and then a hitters park in the summer? I’d just never really noticed that much of a split. Always seemed to be more day-to-day (or even inning-to-inning) rather than month-to-month.

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  5. Author
    berselius

    EnricoPallazzo:
    dmick89,

    I mean yeah but I guess my question was, is wrigley typically a pitchers park in april/may and then a hitters park in the summer? I’d just never really noticed that much of a split. Always seemed to be more day-to-day (or even inning-to-inning) rather than month-to-month.

    I feel like Cubs announcers etc. have been talking about this for years, though I might have heard it somewhere else.

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  6. cerulean

    EnricoPallazzo:
    dmick89,

    I mean yeah but I guess my question was, is wrigley typically a pitchers park in april/may and then a hitters park in the summer? I’d just never really noticed that much of a split. Always seemed to be more day-to-day (or even inning-to-inning) rather than month-to-month.

    While I agree with the day-to-day variation, in the summer it gets hot and balls go farther in the heat. But the real story is this spring. In Chicago, it has been very cool after a relatively warm winter—I think March was warmer than April and May hasn’t been much better—I don’t know that we have hit 80° yet. So it’s just another opportunity for inane announcers to openly doubt global warming.

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  7. EnricoPallazzo

    Rizzo the Rat,

    Fair enough but those espn rankings go strictly by runs. The fangraphs PF ranking that I linked to uses player performance, which I would guess is more accurate given that (for example) a good pitching staff and a terrible offense would yield few runs at the home stadium but that wouldn’t necessarily mean that it’s a pitchers park.

    I wonder how tight the correlation is between the espn PF and the fangraphs PF is. I’m too lazy to try to figure it out on my phone though.

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  8. josh

    I did a stats project for a class and I analyzed wind based on the average windspeed and direction to try to see if there was a correlation between wind blowing in/out and homeruns. I found that there was none, but average daily dosen’t really tell you much about gametime and the only reliable wind measurements are taken at O’Hare so ymmv.

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  9. EnricoPallazzo

    cerulean,

    Did you ever read randall munroe aka xkcd’s book “what if”? It’s pretty entertaining for dorks who like to speculate/argue about stupid shit, which I assume applies to all OV commenters.

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  10. EnricoPallazzo

    josh,

    That’s surprising. Do you have any idea how strong the correlation is between wind speed/direction at ohare versus wrigley? I would figure that it’s generally tight but then again you never hear much about wind being a factor for white sox games and they are just as close to wrigley as wrigley is to ohare so maybe wrigley air is just an anomaly. The near North side (old town to wrigleyville) always does seem a lot windier than the rest of the city but I don’t really know what the hell I’m talking about.

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  11. josh

    EnricoPallazzo,

    No. They need a wind gage at Wrigley, or if they have one they should share the data. I think if I remember, assuming you can draw any conclusions at all from that kind of data, the only real effect was from cross winds and it tended to aid home runs. But none of the correlations were very strong. Could just be that O’Hare and Wrigley are too far away or the lake is playing hell at Wrigley.

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  12. cerulean

    EnricoPallazzo:
    cerulean,

    Did you ever read randall munroe aka xkcd’s book “what if”? It’s pretty entertaining for dorks who like to speculate/argue about stupid shit, which I assume applies to all OV commenters.

    Read it before it was a book.

    Bought Thing Explainer ostensibly for my girls, but mostly for me. (dying laughing)

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  13. cerulean

    Come to think of it, ACB or 1060 was where I first learned about the web comic. So thanks DMick and friends. (Curiosly, xkcd is to this day categorized as a verb in my head, just like FMJ.)

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  14. cerulean

    josh:
    EnricoPallazzo,

    I read his What If blog posts pretty regularly. They’re awesome.

    I always find it disappointing when there is just one or two new things, so I like to forget and then binge.

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  15. uncle dave

    I didn’t read every word so maybe I missed something, but the new site is no longer letting me log in. Is it just me?

    And here I was, all ready to bitch about my dish going out on the one weekend where the Cubs will be blacked out here, and now this. Thanks, Obama.

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